But WAIT! It is rumored that Apple, whether they intended it or not, may be pulling a marketing rope-a-dope, the ,likes of which have not even been attempted since K-Fed pretended that “POPO ZAO “ was just a joke and that his real (read: good) album would be coming out at a later date.

It is rumored that Apple has had another version of the iPad in the works for some time. His other device is supposed to have a screen closer to 15” and an OS closer to what you would find on a Macbook Pro, rather than what you would find on a phone. In other words, this is going to be closer to a laptop replacement with a touch screen, i.e., something I might be interested in buying.

I really want to believe that this is true: I have been consistently amazed with the regularity of Apple’s advances over the years, and was not looking forward to a disappointment. If the rumors are true, I’ll pretend to be surprised when the new device comes out, I promise.

As I celebrate another birthday and reflect upon my youth, I realize how soft my generation has gotten. It used to be that to write a paper, one had to select a topic, go to the library, and find appropriate research materials using something called the Dewey Decimal System. Now all you have to do to achieve the same thing is to plug a few search terms into a search engine without leaving the comfort of your own home. Even worse was having to actually *read* through a lot of the material in order to even know whether or not it was even relevant to your paper. “Ctrl+F” has pretty much solved that little problem.

The absolute worst part (and this may be a little bit more specific to me, personally), was having to use a foreign language dictionary. I spent a lot of time in high school and college studying foreign languages, and spent hours of my life sweating over whether the translation of “wind” that I had used in a paper meant “air that’s moving fast” or “what you might do to a watch” (yes I had a watch that wound).

If I had had a product like Babylon Translation Software, I could have avoided many sleepless nights. I may have even gotten better grades. It’s a quick download, available in 19 countries over five continents. Learn how to say “show me the money” in every language on the planet!

It’s really amazing that anything ever got done at all.

Now, anyone, no matter how lazy they are, can skip the first 20 steps of the old process when it comes to getting the government to move on an issue. With mobile technology today, like the iPhone’s SeeClickFix app, anyone with a phone can send a picture of a problem, along with a detailed description and GPS coordinates, straight to City Hall.

As of late, some major metropolitan governments have been making tons of city information (infrastructure info, etc.) available to mobile web developers. These developers are, in turn, presenting this data to users, allowing taxpayers to more easily access public, albeit obscure, information. This allows for accurate reporting of issues and elimination of confusion between the person bringing a problem to the government’s attention and the one who is dispatched to correct it.

With the adoption of new mobile apps and the creation of city-run twitter accounts, getting the government to act on a matter may soon become a completely different ball game. Instead of acting on every complaint that they get (which will now become more impossible than ever), democracy may begin to act on the complaints with the most “diggs” or “likes”.

2010 is the year of affiliate marketing. Am I biased? Yes. Will 2011 be the year of affiliate marketing too? You betcha. Sure, everyone’s speculating about twitter and facebook, and their business models, but weren’t they clamoring about that last year as well? (And the year before?) It’s easy to get stuck on panache of social media or the mystique of mobile marketing and forget about the ease and relatively straightforward concept of performance based marketing.

At the end of the day, advertisers can spend their money across whatever medium they choose. Affiliate Marketing gives them a fairly straightforward equation for what they’re in store for. It’s a simple concept at the heart of it all: you get what you pay for. If you spend “x” dollars, you will receive “y” leads. At the end of the day, advertisers know what they paid for, they have actual evidence of their advertising dollars at work. Publishers (both individuals and networks) are happy because of the ease of entry into affiliate marketing, and the relative straightforward nature of it. They know what they’ll get paid, given a course of action by a consumer.

Is affiliate marketing the end-all-be-all I’m probably making it out to be? Well, no, but it’s certainly a highly effective piece of any online marketing pie. Go ahead gurus (I said I was biased from the beginning), make your predictions, tell us what we should focus on in 2010. I’ll be here, sticking to what works.

Accenture may have the right idea here: most of the world doesn’t know what they do, aside from sponsoring Tiger. These other brands have a tangible product , to which Tiger may bring attention, but from whose quality he certainly can’t detract (Gatorade’s drinks will still taste the same no matter what they do with Tiger’s contract).

I think it would be foolish for these brands to leave Tiger’s side now. After all, they aren’t likely to find a bigger star, and even if they find one in another sport, his career won’t be as long as that of a golfer. And after this blows over, he’s likely to remember who stood by him and who didn’t.

This is troubling for a couple of reasons. First, one has to wonder what criteria Google will use to determine the legitimacy of advertisement. Would Colgate and Crest fall under the tooth-whitening umbrella? Will Google be testing the products to determine the validity of an advertiser’s claims? Will they be relying on consumer complaints? If so, how many cases of buyer’s remorse will it take to earn a permanent ban?

The problem is that there is almost a guarantee of false positives. It may just be a statistic, or the cost of doing business as far as Google is concerned, but honest affiliates will be put out of business. How did Google become judge and jury? Furthermore, it is hard to believe that they will forever turn down advertising dollars from powerhouses such as Blockbuster, Netflix and Nutrisystem. Not all continuity systems are evil and one has to wonder where Google will draw the line between what is acceptable and what isn’t. The shame is that a few affiliates may learn where the line is the hard way: with a lifetime ban.

Google’s attempt to clean house may end up backfiring on them, as this shift could just send a slew of advertisers to competing search engines. It will be exciting to see how this shakes out.

We’re sure you all want to know how this phenomenon began. Well, Shop.org created a site called CyberMonday.com which is a super affiliate with over 650 leading retailers. On Cyber Monday of 2008 alone, the site had 2.4 million visitors and generated over $12 million in sales during that year’s holiday season. In order for retailers to be listed on the site, they must have an affiliate program on Commission Junction, Linkshare or the Google Affiliate Network.

J.C. Penny Co. and Sears Holdings Corp. aren’t the only ones that have something to offer on Cyber Monday. Here at Blue Phoenix Media, we’ve got some hot revenue generating offers such as Tassimo Direct, Mail by Santa, Gevalia, Fun Mobile and Walk Fit that will for sure increase anyone’s ROI during this holiday season.

Cyber Monday is just another reflection of the power, strength and versatility of affiliate marketing and we’re glad to be able to be part of this unstoppable shopping trend!

  We are pleased to announce that Blue Phoenix Media Inc. will be in full effect at this year’s Ad Tech New York City event!  This action packed conference will be taking place from November 4th-6th at the Jacob Javits Center.  Some presenters include Jimmy Wales who is the founder of Wikipedia, WPP’s Chief Executive Sir Martin Sorrell and Jonathan Miller who is the Chief Digital Officer of News Corporation.  Other speakers will be coming from companies such as MTV Networks, Walmart.com, Google, and Hyundai to name a few.  The conference will include over 200 speakers, more than 60 value driven panels and the expo will feature 250+ exhibitors, including ourselves. 

Aside from Blue Phoenix Media being known for its affiliate network which is comprised of over 200 advertisers and 3,000 active publishers, we also boast 20+ exclusive web properties to maximize brand awareness that we’ve built and own as well as various Education Portals that generate quality leads.  Although our most successful verticals are Education, Consumer Products and Health and Pharmaceuticals, we offer campaigns in over 20 other verticals.  Alongside our proprietary lead generation technology, we have a Coreg platform to serve into registration pages to monetize websites.

Other than some remarkable and well experienced speakers, you’ll find our staff of affiliate managers at the upcoming Ad Tech NYC event.  Talk about another great reason to go, right?  Our CEO Amy Sheridan and COO Malaika Schmidt, founders of Blue Phoenix Media, Inc. will be present as well.   If you would like to set up a meeting in advance, please email meetings@bluephoenixmedia.com.  So, if you haven’t been hiding under a rock, you know better than to not miss this event.  Stop by booth #2118.  See you there!

The first question that every affiliate should ask themselves when considering a network partner is to ask, what does this network have to offer me? One of the great keys to finding success in affiliate marketing is running offers that not everyone is running, so you’re not faced with a ton of competition. This means working with networks that have campaigns direct with the advertiser and, even better, working with networks that create their own exclusive offers. For example, Blue Phoenix carries its own exclusive education offers that you cannot grab anywhere else.

Next is figuring out what payouts your potential network partner is offering for the campaigns that you are interested in. The general rule with payouts are that the bigger number is most of the time better. However, this might not always be the case though. One example is if you are considering a campaign that pays at $40 in one network and $33 in another network. Be sure to ask your account managers how long a campaign has been up. You don’t want to put time and effort into a campaign at a $40 payout and then have that same campaign go down in two days. Your better bet would be to run a slightly lower paying campaign but have that campaign run it for a longer period of time.

Another important factor are payment terms. Net 30 payment is standard, however, be sure to ask your affiliate manager for campaigns that pay earlier so that you have funds ready on hand to continue promoting the offers and maybe even pick up new ones to run in the process.

Perhaps the more important aspect that affiliates sometimes forget to take into consideration when choosing a network is how great is the customer service of your network partners. Are your account managers calling you and making sure that you have everything you need to promote their network’s offers? Are they sending you emails in regards to the newest campaigns to arrive on the network or the latest payout increases? Is your network taking a proactive approach to combating fraud so that publishers who are legitimately promoting do not lose out on quality campaigns due to fraudulent activity?

With the number of networks that are out there, you can never be too picky with the networks you choose to work with. After all, these networks do sign your checks at the end of the day.

Blue Phoenix Media

I agree with her wholeheartedly, but my spin on successful advertising campaigns focuses not on the need and rather on the want. According to Maslow’s theory of basic needs, the two most basic needs that must be met are deficiency and physiological needs. These two needs must be met in order for any other higher need to come into focus.

So how does this hierarchy of need fit into a good advertising campaign you may ask? Well, I’d like to think a good marketer is a marketer that can turn any consumer want into a need. Now some of you might think that this is exactly why performance marketing has come under heavy fire, because of deceptive marketing tactics. However, there is a huge difference between using Oprah’s face to market a product when she has not endorsed it versus using a customer testimonial who praises a product.

Put together a campaign that focuses on your product as an aid, a facilitator (not as a panacea) to helping customers fulfill whatever need they are looking to fill and you’ve got yourself a happy customer as well as money coming in.

Blue Phoenix Media